Nicolo Rizzuto

Nicolo "Nick" Rizzuto (18 February 1924-10 November 2010) was the founder of the Rizzuto crime family of Montreal, Quebec and the father of Vito Rizzuto. He was murdered by a sniper in 2010.

Biography
Nicolo Rizzuto was born in Cattolica Eraclea, Sicily on 18 February 1924, and he grew up with a stepfather, as his father had been murdered in New York in 1933. He emigrated to Canada in 1954 with his wife Libertina Manno, his son Vito Rizzuto, and his daughter, and he formed a Mafia crew with the help of Sicilian relatives and associates who already lived in Canada. He became an associate of the Cotroni crime family during the 1970s, and he took advantage of a power struggle between the Sicilian and Calabrian factions of Montreal organized crime to become the independent boss of the newly-formed Rizzuto crime family. In 1978, while he was in Venezuela, he orchestrated the murder of Bonanno crime family soldier Paolo Violi, who had been appointed acting boss of the Montreal crew, enabling him to take over the city's Mafia. During the 1980s, the family became the main player in the city's drug importation racket, but he was arrested in Venezuela on 2 August 1988 after 700 grams of cocaine were found at his residence. He was released in 1993 and allowed to return to Montreal, and, while he remained patriarch of his family, his son Vito was the official boss. He was arrested again in 2006, but he was released in 2008 after investigators failed to implicate him in any of his son's crimes. In 2010, he was forced to pay a $209,000 fine for tax evasion. On 10 November 2010, Rizzuto was shot by a sniper who fired a single shot through the rear patio doors of his Cartierville mansion, and his death was a fatal blow to the family, which lost its founder and patriarch. His death was orchestrated as a part of Salvatore Montagna's attempt to take over Montreal from the weakened Rizzuto family, as Vito was still in prison; this left Declan Gardiner to become acting boss.